The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report on the CIA’s enhanced interrogation methods (euphemism for torture) that revealed gruesome torture, cover-ups, mismanagement, lies and deliberate misleading of the public by the agency. The report released on Tuesday is the result of a five-year Senate investigation into the CIA’s post 9/11 programs. But the efforts of our lawmakers could prove futile if the Obama Administration does not bring those who tortured and authorized torture to justice. 

The CIA was lying about the extent and effectiveness of its torture of detainees in secret locations around the world. Techniques employed by the agency include excessive water boarding, making people stand on broken legs, sleep deprivation that sometimes lasted more than 180 hours, rape, rectal feeding, threats to family members and ultimately murder of suspects. One detainee died of hypothermia after being placed nearly naked in a cold cell.

Contrary to CIA claims, the report revealed that torture did not lead to valuable new intelligence or prevent attacks on the United States. The agency employed inexperienced employees and contractors, including interrogators with anger problems.

Then-CIA director Michael Hayden even lied about the numbers of the agency’s detainees while testifying in front of a Senate committee in 2008. He said the agency held fewer than 100 suspects, but the report revealed that at least 119 individuals were detained by the agency at the time. The report also discloses that at least 25 detainees were wrongfully held by the agency.

The perpetrators who gave the orders to torture should stand trial, even if they worked or lived in the White House. As Harry Truman said, the buck stops there.

Torture is illegal according to both U.S. and international law. The Constitution clearly bans cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment. The Geneva Conventions, which the United States ratified in 1882, also outlaws the mistreatment of prisoners of war.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate committee that led to the investigation, said the CIA’s brutal interrogation techniques are “in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations and our values.”

She added that the report should serve as “a warning for the future.” 

“We cannot again allow history to be forgotten and grievous past mistakes to be repeated,” Feinstein said.

But the mere release of the report does not mean that we will learn from the past. If the officials who committed these crimes are not punished, the abuses are bound to be repeated. Not pressing charges against officials responsible for torture will send a message to intelligence and law enforcement agencies that they can get away with violating human rights in the name of national security.

As Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said, “Unless this important truth-telling process leads to prosecution of officials, torture will remain a ‘policy option’ for future presidents.”

However, it does not seem that either the president or his justice department are interested in justice or accountability. 

President Obama did criticize the CIA’s actions as inconsistent with our values without referring to the abuses as torture. However, he excused the agency’s employees and gave them a pat on the back after the report was released.

“I think overall, the men and women at the CIA do a really tough job and they do it really well,” Obama said Tuesday in an interview with Telemundo. “But in the aftermath of 9/11, in the midst of a national trauma and uncertainty as to whether these attacks were gonna repeat themselves, what’s clear is that the CIA set up something very fast without a lot of forethought to what the ramifications might be.”

Even Republican Sen. Jon McCain was harsher in his criticism of torture than Obama. McCain, a prisoner of war and survivor of torture himself, said on the floor of the Senate Tuesday that the abuses “stained our national honor.”

The findings of the report are unfortunate, although they did not surprise many people. But the fact that the justice department will not prosecute the Bush Administration officials who authorized these shameful programs is a tragic statement on our legal system.

We live in a system that protects the strong and abandons the weak; overlooks the crimes of the powerful and strikes mercilessly against the underprivileged; and applies the law selectively— only when it benefits certain people.

That’s why New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo did not go to trial for chocking Eric Garner to death on camera, but Troy Davis got executed for a crime he did not commit in Georgia; the CIA and the Bush Administration will likely get away with torture and Rasmea Odeh went to jail for being tortured 45 years ago.